THE “CITIES” OF KUFARA
On January 16 our battles began again. Unfortunately Hassanein was ill,
but he dragged himself up for a last effort. Perhaps success had gone to
our heads a little, for not content with visiting Taj and Jof, the
religious centre and the seat of Government, we had lately made plans
for exploring the oasis to its farthest limits. In vain the unfortunate
retinue pointed out that it would be another case of Hawawiri. “The
Zouias are in the two ‘cities,’” they urged. “There is nothing in the
villages. You can throw a stone into Buma from these walls, so why tire
yourselves further?” We felt that this sudden thought for our comfort
had an ulterior motive, so we pursued the subject. “I should like to see
the people,” I said to Yusuf. “You will see them all in the suq at Jof.
Every week they come in to buy and to sell. They are savages, the Zouias
who live on the edge of the oasis, and they are poor people without
interest.” “Well, I should like to see the western end of the wadi.”
Yusuf looked puzzled. “But you can see everything in Kufara from this
mountain,” he said with some truth. I was reduced to retorting that I
could not see the actual houses of Tolab and Zuruk. Our fat retainer had
a distinct sense of humour. “Nor could you see the houses of Hawawiri
from our camp!” he reminded. “I want to meet the heads of the Zouias and
if I go to all the villages I can talk to them.” Yusuf seized upon this
happily. “They can come and see you and then you can ask them about
their people.”
Thus word went forth from the kaimakaan that all the tribal headmen were
to come to Taj to meet the important strangers and the hour and place
appointed for this most solemn council were “four hours before sunset in
the house of Sidi Idris.” We had anticipated battle, because Abdullah
had been absent for twenty-four hours and we learned too late that he
had been making a tour of the small villages, expounding the treacherous
stories which had failed in the Senussi centres, but we did not expect
quite such a disastrous meeting. The fifteen sheikhs who appeared nearly
two hours late at the rendezvous, were weak and convinced that if they
carried out their designs they would be acting against the wish of the
Sayeds whom they respected and honoured. Yet so great was their long-
cherished loathing of the stranger, which had been fostered by years of
isolation till it was as much a part of their creed as the Shehada or
the Zakah, that they were determined at all costs to prevent our
penetrating farther into their country. One gradually absorbed something
of the mentality of this strange, distrustful people as one sat amidst
the circle of gloomy, suspicious faces.
For generations the Zouias have been known as a lawless tribe.
Originally they came from the Fezzan by groups of families, each owning
a particular headman, but they never seem to have possessed one supreme
chief. The two most famous of the ancient sheikhs were Abdullah Shekari
and Helaig, though it was Agil who met Sidi Ben Ali es-Senussi in Mecca
and told him of the strange enclosed land in the centre of the Sahara
which the Zouias had conquered from the enfeebled Tebu. The great
ascetic had already set flame to the religious imagination of North
Africa from Morocco eastwards, but he knew nothing of southern Libya.
Yet he told the half savage tribesmen that in a wadi near Taiserbo would
be found an irak tree, from the wood of which the Arabs make their
primitive form of toothbrushes. The tree was duly discovered, the
miracle announced to the tribe and, later, Agil went north again to
Gebel Akhbar in Cyrenaica, to offer the allegiance of his people to the
great Senussi. Kufara, the original sultanate of the Tebus, had become
since the Zouia conquest some two hundred and fifty years before, a
danger spot to every caravan, for it was a regular stronghold of
brigands who lived by plunder.
It was a definite custom that all travellers, especially merchants,
passing through the oasis, should pay “darb,” a duty which varied
according to the value of their merchandise, otherwise the caravan would
be attacked and plundered.
Before the coming of the Senussi there were only palms in the oasis and
the tribesmen were content with the most primitive clothes, hardly
better than those of the skin-clad Tebus. It was Sidi el Mahdi who
introduced the jerd and the jubba.
The dawn of civilisation came with the ekhwan sent by Sidi Ben Ali, but
the Mahdi made Kufara the wonderland it is to-day and by extensive
planting started the cultivation of grain, fruit and flowers. Sidi Idris
owes some of his influence among the Zouias to the fact that he is the
great Mahdi’s son, though his own strong personality counts for much in
a land where striking individuality is rare. Under the Senussi
government the Zouias were obliged to give up their organised
brigandage, but with such a long history of murder and plunder behind
them—half the tragedies of the Sahara may be laid at their door—it is
not to be wondered at that they are still lawless and wild. Every man
fears them and only a power as great as the Senussi could hold them in
check. They were practically infidels before they made their submission
to Sidi Ben Ali, having very nearly lapsed from Islam, though, as they
come from Yemen, they probably formed part of the armies who followed
Beni Suleim in the eleventh century, from Midian through Syria and Egypt
to Cyrenaica where some tribes settled, notably the Abidat, Hassan,
Faied, Brahsa, Hohsa, Abid Auwaghir and Mogharba. With the fierce
religious fanaticism which they absorbed fresh from the fervent ascetics
who were enthusiastically preaching a new, pure Islam, were mixed the
hatred and scorn of all who had not received this teaching. “He who is
not with us is against us,” was interpreted literally and the land was
closed against the stranger, be he Christian or Moslem.
It was easy, therefore, to understand the attitude of the white-robed
figures who crouched immobile round one end of the long room. They felt
that they were defending not only their jealously hidden country but
their religion from the strangers whom they hated and feared. In their
hearts they could not believe that the greatly revered Sayeds had
authorised our journey. Continual distrust and suspicion are bad daily
companions. They had marred and lined the brooding faces round us till
there was little left of the frank, fearless Beduin. On one side sat
Hamid Bu Korayim, son of the man who had saved Rohlfs, his dark, narrow
face set in mute obstinacy. In front of us was Sheikh Suleiman Bu Matar,
the only spot of colour in the group, for he wore a brilliant orange
robe under his jerd, and Bush Naf el Ghadad, an old man with a grey
beard who occasionally poured a little oil on the troubled waters.
Others present were Sheikh Badr and Mabruk Bu Helayig.
The whole assembly had made up its mind to oppose us and they would
listen to no argument. “Khallas! It is ended! It is ended! Of what use
further speech?” they cried. “If you have a letter from Sidi Idris,
saying that you are to visit all our villages by name, then you shall
go,” said Bu Korayim. “You know that we have the Sayed’s permission to
visit Kufara. No traveller can set foot beyond Jedabia without it. Do
you think we should have risked certain death? We know that no one can
hope to visit even the outskirts of your country without the consent of
Sidi Idris, but we are his guests!” They changed their ground. “You have
seen Kufara,” urged Suleiman Bu Matar. “Jof and Taj are the ‘markas’
[centre of government]. The villages are not interesting. There are no
zawias even.” Argument was useless, for none dared give way before the
others. We saw that one or two were weakening out of respect for the
fact that we were guests of their rulers, but the old inherited instinct
welded them together. Generally it would be impossible to get fifteen
Arabs to remain united against strong arguments for a quarter of an
hour, but we were fighting a principle as profoundly part of their
existence as food and drink. “Khallas! Khallas!” resounded from every
side and, without even waiting for the usual ceremony of tea-drinking,
the meeting rose hurriedly. “We have spoken,” they said, “and argument
is of no avail.” “If you go, you go at your own risk,” added Sheikh
Badr. Yet before the last flow of protest they had read the “Fatha” all
together to show that they honoured the Sayed in the persons of his
guests!
So the strange council of impulse and reason came to an end and, as the
last white-robed figure fumbled for its shoes at the edge of the matted
loggia, Hassanein turned to me despondently. “We have failed
absolutely!” he said. I would not agree. The guests had come to us
strong with a great resolve, wound up to battle pitch, each man
determined to support the others. Now they would separate and, each
alone, would have the nasty cold feeling of wondering what he had done
and what the final result of his action would be. “Wait!” said I. “Very
soon they will feel that they have shown us how dangerous it is to cross
their borders and they will only remember in whose house they met us!”
Later in the afternoon a Mojabra merchant, Tawati Haifan, cousin of our
old friend She-ib, and one of the ekhwan, Sayed Mohammed Semmen, visited
us, partly to welcome and partly to console us for the behaviour of the
Zouias. “They are bad people,” they said. “They have always been like
that.”
Then sunset came and with it the summons to dinner in the house of many
courts. The Wadi of Kufara is always beautiful, but at sunset it is
magical, for the girdle of strange hills glows with wonderful mauve and
violet lights and the oasis lies half in shadow where blend the emerald
and sapphire of palm and lake, half in flame, where the burning sands
reflect the glory of the sky. It used to make me catch my breath with
ever-new surprise as I came out of the discreet little door in the wake
of the ebony slave, who took a great interest in the state of my
appetite and never could understand why I could not cope with three
separate breakfasts sent me by as many hosts.
[Illustration: ZAWIA TOWER AT TAJ]
[Illustration: KUFARA WADI, FROM TAJ]
I never realised more fully the remoteness of Kufara than when, after
the deft-handed slaves had spirited away the huge, brass tray, and with
it every trace of our meal, we sat motionless beside our host in the
long shadowed room, while he silently and very slowly made his carefully
prepared tea. The many high-walled courts produced a silence in that dim
room of thick carpets and rare lights as profound as the stillness of
the desert. Words, even smiles, would have been out of place during the
little ceremony, while rose-water or mint was being measured gravely by
the sensitive fingers of our host. Beyond the circle of light cast by a
solitary candle in a high silver sconce were only vague forms of
cushions or huge chests looming in remote corners. Within it was a dark,
thin-faced young sheikh, all in white, from his silken kufiya to his
flowing jerd and beside him our grave, reflective host, with a vivid
green shawl bordered in purple framing his bronzed face and drooping
over a long green jubba, which showed the richly embroidered sedairi
beneath. A jewelled hand slowly poured drop after drop of essence into
the amber glasses, while the scented smoke of a little brazier drifted
gently across the picture. One heard Time pause to catch the shadows of
thoughts that wavered between the light and the dark, so mystic was the
silence. Then suddenly and startlingly clear came the sound that
perfected the harmony—the cry of the muezzin for the evening prayer!
[Illustration: BARRAKING: A TOO SUDDEN DESCENT]
[Illustration: A LUNCH IN KUFARA VALLEY]
Next day a small and somewhat forlorn party descended one of the steep
defiles into the wadi. It consisted of Hassanein and myself, mounted on
microscopic yet exceedingly unruly donkeys, the Commandant of the
Gendarmerie, resplendent in pale grey uniform slashed and faced with red
and an immense tasselled kufiya, with four fully armed soldiers and a
most picturesque Zouia sheikh, Mohammed Teifaitah, the only tribesman
who was brave enough to accompany us. He was splendidly mounted on a
white Arab horse, curved of neck and long of pastern, with a scarlet
saddle, bow-pommelled, five different coloured saddle-cloths, and silver
stirrups rather like sharp coal scuttles.
Kufara is narrow at the eastern end and with a break in the southern
wall of cliff, where a broad space runs out beyond Zuruk, it widens
gradually as it goes west. The main mass of palms begins between Jof and
Taj and sweeps west to Talakh, but there are several isolated groups, of
which those of Boema and Buma are the largest. We rode first eastwards,
along the foot of the cliffs and I realised as we ambled through thick,
pale coral sand that if one wishes to keep the impression of an
enchanted valley one should never leave the heights. There are beautiful
spots in the valley, where palm and tamarisk and rush blend their shades
of green beside some unruffled lake, but it is from above that one
grasps the whole wonder of water and wood and decorative dark-walled
towns, set in the close circle of jewelled hills.
As we neared Boema, its few houses, large, square or oblong blocks of
reddish-purple, standing just below the northern cliffs a little apart
from its gardens, the sheikh grew very nervous. White figures came out
to look at us and he urged us away, but I wanted a photograph! Let no
one imagine it is easy to manage a wild, toy donkey, keep one’s face
completely hidden and secrete about one’s pocketless person two kodaks
and a spare roll of films!
The oasis at Boema is lovely, for various kinds of thorn, a few dark
green olives, tamarisks, acacias and the feathery grey trees described
as “firewood,” all mingled their foliage with the clustered palms. A
kilometre away is Buma. At one end of the oasis are a few poor dwellings
of the slaves who tend the gardens, some of them made of palms, some of
uneven sand bricks. At the other there is a village of the usual dark
houses, while a lovely turquoise lake, bordered with high rushes, lies
in the centre. On the southern shore, where there is a stretch of rough,
dry, salt waste, we found the ruins of a large Tebu fort. These ancient
people chose their sites well, for this high, round honeycomb stood on
the very edge of the water, its grey, broken walls one with the salt
stone that surrounded it and made passage difficult from the land. There
were one or two of the small, round oven houses scattered near the lake
and we wondered if Buma had been the capital of the old Tebu Kufara—then
called Tazerr—for this fort was bigger than anything at Buseima, but
roofless and windowless as usual.
From the plantations of pumpkins, radishes, parsnips, onions, with
neatly irrigated patches of wheat and barley, we drove our escort south
down the long, flat stretch of gravelly sand to Zuruk, a long strip of
palms chiefly owned by Sidi Idris and other Sayeds. There is no village
in this southernmost oasis. It is inhabited only by the Sudani slaves
who look after the dates. We stopped at a palm-leaf fence to ask a huge
ebony figure in a tattered white shirt for some dates. He dived into his
plaited leaf “tukel,” reminiscent of the Sudan, and reappeared with a
gourd full of large, dry, purplish dates mixed with the lemon-coloured
unripe ones that the Arabs eat to quench their thirst. We rode the whole
length of Zuruk’s palms, for by this time the Zouia had laid aside his
suspicions and was becoming confidential. We asked him how long ago his
people had come to Kufara, and he replied, “My father, my grandfather
and his father have all lived here, but before then the tribe came.
Sheikh Mohammed was fifty-six, so we gathered that the conquest had
taken place some hundred and fifty years ago. It is a pathetic thing
that the Tebus are disappearing from the wadi even faster than the
traces of their odd round houses. Only a few years ago there were about
five hundred of these dark-skinned, round-faced people, with smooth
hair, broad nostrils and wide mouths, but devoid of the thick negroid
lips. Now there are between fifty and a hundred. Nearly all of them live
in a palm-leaf village with a few round mud hovels on the outskirts of
Jof. They are more pastoral in habit than the Arabs, so, in spite of
their debased position as employees of the Zouias, they own a good many
goats and sheep and a few camels.”
There is practically no pasturage in the wadi, only a little coarse
grass or rushes by the lakes and sparse tufts of the brown, mossy hattab
we saw at Buseima. Therefore there are very few flocks indeed and milk
and meat are luxuries except among the prosperous ekhwan of Taj. Fresh
water is not plentiful, for there are no springs. There is absolutely no
rainfall. Sometimes for eight consecutive years there is not a single
shower. All the gardens are irrigated from wells, but slave labour is
abundant. Yet Kufara in summer must be a veritable Eden. From her grapes
she makes the sweet vinegar we drank at banquets and from her roses the
essence dropped into our tea, as well as the heavier perfume used in
braziers. She has olives for oil, almonds, lemons, figs, melons and
peaches. Her leather comes from the Sudan and the shoemakers in Jof
fashion delightful red heel-less shoes of soft, pliable hide without
nails, but with thongs to bind round the ankles. The Tebus make baskets
and rope from the palm leaves, but there is no weaving. The rich clothes
of the princely ekhwan, which were our envy and admiration, came from
Egypt. “Before the war there were many caravans. One came nearly every
day” (which means that one was nearly always within the confines of the
oasis, perhaps a weekly arrival). “Now there are very few,” said Sheikh
Mohammed.
We learned that when a caravan came from the Sudan it consisted of 150
camels, belonging to perhaps a dozen different merchants, who brought
ivory, feathers, sandal, leather; but smuggling of slaves had been
difficult since the stringent French law had decreed that the whole
caravan should be confiscated if one slave were found in it. As a matter
of fact, we had been thirty-seven days on the route from Jedabia and we
had not met a single caravan from Wadai, nor did any arrive while we
were in Kufara; but this may have been partly due to the fact that the
Beduins prefer travelling in summer, when they march all night and sleep
most of the day. They can go farther this way, without suffering from
the intense cold of the winter dawn. Also the winter is the foaling time
for camels in Libya, which makes travelling precarious.
There is a large market in Jof twice a week, to which people come from
as far off as Hawari and Tolab to barter pigeons, eggs, fowls, girbas
and foodstuffs. Slaves are not now sold in the public square on Mondays
and Thursdays, but many a human bargain is arranged in the shuttered
houses around it. For 100 mejidies one can buy a man and for 200 a
woman, but young girls of fourteen and fifteen fetch up to 250 mejidies
(nearly £50). “These be high prices,” said the Zouia despondently. “But
the people in Barca have bought many slaves lately and there are fewer
caravans.” We learned that the Tuaregs of the west had regular slave
farms, where they bred and sold human beings as we do cattle. “You can
see sixty slaves in one farm,” said our guardian sheikh. As an instance
of how uncivilised were the Zouias before the coming of the Senussi, he
told us that a certain Sheikh Mohammed Sherif went to Benghazi, the end
of the world, and came back with an oil lamp which was looked upon as a
miracle by the tribesmen of Kufara. By the power of a little kerosene he
ruled them for years, giving judgments and discovering malefactors by
interpreting its light.
Deep in conversation we skirted the rough, rocky ground to the south of
the broad belt of Jof palms and came to Talakh, at the end of the
emerald maze where Sayed Ahmed owns many gardens. A whole colony of
slaves dwelt in clusters of “tukels,” within neat palm-leaf fences and
there were some biggish houses of sand bricks, on whose flat roofs
masses of dates were drying in the sun. The afternoon was far advanced
by this time, but the Zouia was anxious to show us the beauty spot of
the oasis, so we rode through the thickest palm groves between mounds of
grey bushes until quite suddenly we came to a little round lake, whose
still water reflected every frond of the palms drooping round it under
the shadow of high amber banks which shut in the pool on every side, so
that duck sported on it peacefully without fear of onlookers. It was a
lovely picture, with the rose-red hills in the distance, but we were
glad to turn our donkeys’ heads homewards and still gladder when the
massive houses of Taj appeared on the most precipitous cliff in the
distance.
The names of the villages in Kufara are interesting, for whereas Taj
means very suitably “a crown,” and Jof “inside,” Zuruk and Tolab are the
names of two tribes which are still to be found in Egypt. Sheikh
Mohammed told us that they had helped the Zouias to conquer the
unfortunate Tebu and had received the places bearing their names as
their share of the spoil. Later, however, they had grown tired of the
remote valley and of the endless disputes between Zouias and Tebus,
which lasted till the coming of the Senussi, and had returned to their
own country.
January 18 saw the virtual end of our pilgrimage. As we took leave of
Sidi Saleh, after our third cup of mint tea, he asked us if we would
like to visit the Zawia of the Asayad. Daily we had passed the massive
block of buildings from which generally issued the sound of the chanted
Koran. We knew that inside those formidable walls was the qubba of the
Mahdi, a symbol only, for the Senussi believe their saint still living,
but nevertheless, the goal of all Senussi pilgrims and the object of
almost as much veneration as the tomb of the Prophet. In the course of
slow, dignified conversation, with the correct proportion of prolonged
silences, we had delicately approached the subject of visiting the
revered shrine, but no other sanction than “Insha-allah” had been
vouchsafed us. Time and date are never suggested in the East. Thus we
had to wait patiently till the kaimakaan was satisfied that the suitable
moment had come.
We passed through the large, low mosque which joined the zawia. Rows of
great, square, whitewashed pilasters supported the heavy wooden palm
trunks forming the beams of the flat roof. It was utterly unadorned and
the “mimbar” was of the simplest description, without paint or carving;
yet for a moment, as I stood on the threshold of the holy of holies of a
great warrior confraternity, austere and fanatical, I forgot the
troubles and dangers of a long journey. I understood something of the
awe and reverence of any other shoeless pilgrim, who, after much travel,
steps at last from the white mats of the mosque into the dim chamber
where he will kiss the sacred qubba. For the first time I realised the
great peace which comes at a journey’s end, yet the long, narrow room
was unlike our Western idea of a shrine. Nearly the whole of the floor
space was occupied by the graves of members of the Senussi family,
oblongs of desert sand, with a stone edging and an upright slab at
either end. A narrow carpeted pathway ran round these to the farthest
corner where stood the qubba of the Mahdi—an ark-shaped wooden framework
covered with a red cloth.
As befits a creed which forbids all luxury, the simplicity of the room
was striking. There was nothing to impress the pilgrim except his own
passionate reverence. His worship must of necessity be a thing of the
spirit and not of the senses. Yet that low dim chamber in the middle of
the Sahara is in its way as impressive as St. Peter’s at Rome, or the
Temple of Heaven in Pekin! Cardinals and mandarins may bring mixed
motives to their worship, but the fierce-eyed Beduin in rough white
burnus, worn wooden rosary hanging from sun-dried fingers, prays with a
strenuous simplicity and earnestness that must impress the very
atmosphere with the sincerity of his devotion. Thus I felt as, hands
raised to Heaven, I murmured the “Bismallah Arahman Arahim” under keen
watching eyes; but when we passed out into the sunlight the impression
faded and one’s guard was up again!
First there was a fight with the blacks who had become hopelessly
unruly. Having been only remarkable for their absence when there was any
real danger, they now devoted their time to eating, sleeping and talking
of their prowess. We, therefore, decided to send them back to Jalo by
the main caravan route and go on ourselves to Jaghabub. This time the
retinue protested in vain. We had suffered too much from their fears
coming in to wish to return through the continual minor panics of the
Zouia country. The Jaghabub route is considerably shorter, for it cuts
off the angle of Jalo and, above all, it is utterly unknown to
Europeans. As it necessitates at least twelve days without water, some
600 kilometres, it is rarely attempted except by very large well-
equipped caravans, who can afford to lose a few camels by the way, or by
the Senussi family, who can send camels laden with water on ahead to
fill some reservoirs especially placed for the purpose.
We had seen the dangers of travelling with a moderately large and
inefficient retinue, so we now determined to try the other extreme. We
proposed to take with us only Mohammed and Yusuf, a guide and perhaps a
camel-man. We should have to take four camels for water alone and
another two at least for fodder, before we could think of luggage and
provisions. The latter are easy, for it is no use providing for more
than seventeen days at the outside after leaving Hawawiri. If by that
time the traveller is not safely in Jaghabub he is dead, for there are
no wells on the route after leaving Zakar, three days from Hawawiri.
Altogether it would be an exciting journey and, looking at the blank
white space on our survey map, where not even Zakar was marked, we
longed to put a long red line across it. Caravans from Egypt should
logically do the Jaghabub route unless they go direct from Siwa, which
means an extra half-day without water. The alternative is seven days to
Jalo, one to Buttafal, then seven to Zieghen and a further five to
Hawawiri. The worst point of the more direct route is that there are
four days of bad dunes just before reaching Jaghabub. However, anything
was preferable to trying to keep the peace between Beduins and Sudanese
for three weeks, with the accompanying tale of sore feet and overladen
camels, water squandered, fuel all used during the first few days and
doubtless a delay at each well.
We spent most of the morning arguing with the soldiers, who all
apparently wanted to get married at Jaghabub, probably on the reward
they hoped to get for accompanying us there. Then visitors began to
arrive, which proved that the mental atmosphere was changing. The
chilly, doubtful feeling I had predicted was beginning to trouble the
Zouias who had so stormily swept from our presence two days before. The
dark Hamid Bu Korayim was the first to come. He had been one of the
loudest to denounce the strangers. Now he said: “I wanted all the men to
come out to meet you with drums, but there was dissension. What you said
at the meeting was true, but it would not have been good for me to have
agreed with you then. I was obliged to support the others, for we had
arranged what we were going to say beforehand.” This was a poor specimen
of Arab mentality, but he was followed by an entirely different type,
Suleiman Bu Matar, old and much-travelled, very devoted to the Senussi
family. At the original meeting he had been calm and suave, only saying
that we should waste time by going to the villages. Now he said with
very quiet dignity, “Your words were wise, but you must not judge the
people here by your own countrymen. Egypt is the mother of the world.
The villagers here are very ignorant.” He then offered to accompany us
to the other end of the oasis.
Thereafter the retinue were somewhat less frightened and we went to Jof
without difficulty. We rode along a little causeway which crossed the
big, curly lake in the midst of the Jof palm gardens and when we came to
the rough, salt marsh on the farther side, we found the ruins of a whole
Tebu village. Some of the houses were amazingly small but very well
preserved—the hard mortar smooth and always polished on the outside—
looking exactly like round clay ovens. As at Buma, on the very edge of
the water was a castle. It appears that the Tebus fought only with
spears, so a strip of water was a good protection against attack.
Therefore, wherever there is a lake in the Kufara or Buseima oases, one
is pretty certain to find the ruins of villages and primitive forts. The
Zouias won an easy victory because they had guns and gunpowder. Jof is a
large native town stretching for about a kilometre in a line of solid,
long walls without door or window. At one end is the old zawia
established by the ekhwan of Sidi Ben Ali. It is an insignificant
building, very low, with a dark, bare mosque, large and very well kept,
and in a further room a qubba of the daughters of Sidi el Mahdi. This
tomb is enclosed in a green wooden frame and hung with quantities of
ostrich eggs. It is much venerated and in one of the courts we saw some
pilgrims from Wadai, fierce-looking blacks with rosaries and long palm
staves.
The whole life of an Arab town goes on within the high, impenetrable
walls. Otherwise they are cities of the dead. I doubt if we saw a dozen
figures in the streets of Jof till we came to the Tebu settlement, yet
it has a population of some seven hundred. The women literally never set
foot outside their houses. The whole time I was in Taj I never saw a
woman except one or two elderly black slaves. It must be an
extraordinary life within a few square feet bounded by blind walls. The
ladies of the Sayeds’ families can visit each other perhaps, as in Taj
the houses of the Senussi family are adjoining. But I have never been in
any Eastern town where life was so reserved and aloof. Presumably the
men gossip, but if so, they do it in each other’s houses, for one never
sees a group in the streets. Very occasionally one notices a grave
figure with brass ewer or humble teapot, performing the necessary
ablution at sunset before saying the obligatory prayers, or perhaps a
reflective grey-bearded individual standing at an open door. The great
difference between the Senussi towns and any other desert city is the
entire absence in the former of the cafés, which usually form the centre
of life and movement. They vary in size and splendour, but, from
Omdurman to Tuggourt, one finds in every village at least a mud-walled
room with rough benches and little tables, or, in the more primitive
places, merely a raised ledge running round the walls, where all the
menfolk gossip over longstemmed narghilehs, while generally a dancer
performs some variation of the _danse du ventre_. In Libya, smoking,
drinking and dancing-girls are forbidden by the Senussi law. Therefore
the café has no _raison d’être_ and the towns are silent, apparently
deserted, infinitely discreet!
We rode all round the scattered masses of Jof’s houses, meeting She-ib’s
brother, Ahmed el Khadri, a well-known Senussi clerk, who greeted us
warmly and was delighted to get news of his family. Then we climbed the
little group of gherds beyond the town and looked down upon the Tebu
village whose headman is Sa-ad el Tebu. Very primitive were the
dwellings after the solid Zouia buildings, for the greater part were
just palm-leaf huts. The men were generally tall and clad in sheepskins,
the wool worn inside. Their food, when they travel, consists of powdered
locusts and powdered dates mixed together. The women wore only one long
dark piece of stuff, wound round them like a barracan, but generally
tattered and somewhat inadequate. The young ones were distinctly pretty
with charming round faces, wide, long-lashed eyes, almost black skins,
but without any of the swollen negroid characteristics.
As we rode back across the wadi I discovered the right adjective for the
cliffs of Kufara. Of course they were amber, a rich, mellow amber, which
detracted from the green of the palms, so that the gardens of Jof took
on a wonderful silvery-grey appearance against the burnt gold of the
hills.
That night, while meticulously measuring the just proportion of tea,
sugar and spice, the kaimakaan offered to show us an original letter of
Sidi Ben Ali es Senussi to the people of Wajanga on the road to Wadai. I
think our enthusiastic interest pleased him, for he at once detached an
immense key from his belt and gave it to a slave, who brought a casket
not much bigger than the key. This was placed solemnly in the circle of
light on the dark-piled carpets and in the almost tangible silence that
seemed to reign within that house, Sidi Saleh reverently drew forth a
single sheet of rough quarto paper, three-quarters of which was covered
with minute, old-fashioned Arabic. I give the literal translation in the
appendix because the letter is of historical importance as it announces
the Senussi’s intention of accepting the allegiance of the Zouias, of
coming to Kufara with the tacit understanding that his rule would be
accepted so far south of Wajanga. It was an exceedingly interesting
document and one fully appreciated its value in the exotic house of Sidi
el Abed in the middle of the legendary oasis.